This two-volume collection represents a body of work spanning 40 years and contains a selection of Dasgupta's most original papers on six key themes. Both volumes feature foundational papers and substantial original introductions. The articles reflect inter-disciplinary scholarship in the author's search for a unifying way to analyse the problems people face in trying to allocate resources over time, among groups, and across uncertain contingencies. Each volume opens with an extended essay explaining the motivation underlying economics; the concept of what economics is about and how modern economists move within it.
The author makes essential use of findings in anthropology, demography, ecology, geography, moral philosophy, and the environmental and nutritional sciences, but studies social phenomena through the lens of economics, to unravel the pathways by which scarce resources are produced, exchanged, and disseminated.